New Terms of Use Coming to Wikipedia

One interesting aspect of these TOS is that they have a very American flavor. There seems to have been no attempt to cherry pick law; the Wikimedia Foundation is in the US and it relies on US law, both helpful (CDA § 230) and perhaps less helpful (DMCA).

One Response to New Terms of Use Coming to Wikipedia

I took part in the comment discussion of the drafting, which was, err, “interesting”. I still haven’t made up my mind on whether it mattered at all (as opposed to mattering a tiny bit). Though the new Wikimedia General Counsel is very professional and polite in dealing with questions and objections – that’s laudable.

I miss there being a place like the old cyberia list where a non-lawyer could ask questions about Internet legal issues, and have a reasonably good discussion. The draft version had an indemnification provision, which was later taken out. I can’t tell whether that was actual response to community comments, or a virtue from necessity (i.e. whether Wikimedia could ever reasonably hope to legally enforce an indemnification provision, against volunteer contributions).